Hello everyone. The slides from our presentation should be up soon. Please feel free to shoot us any questions if something comes up that you didn't think of in class.
I was really happy with how our presentation ended up coming together. I learned a lot about Post-Colonial Literary Theory and I feel like we were able to share some of its main ideas and components with the rest of the class. One thing that I think we would go back and change was to mix-up the lecture part with the practicing with texts parts a bit more. It was heavy lecture in the beginning and then a lot of activity at the end. Our intention behind this was to make sure everyone knew and understood the theory before attempting to practice with it. But it could have been interesting to see how our opinions of the texts, and how we read them changed as the class discovered more about the theory itself (a bit like we did with the Invictus trailer).
That being said, I really think the components of the lecture stuck with everyone. In my small group at the end of our presentation we viewed the lyrics to "Redemption Song" by Bob Marley and it was fantastic to hear how all of the group was able to breakdown the lyrics using post-colonial theory. If I were assessing understanding from a teaching perspective I would have felt confident that the lesson worked simply by hearing the rich discussion that I was a part of. My group was using the terminology of this theory and really digging apart the language and message with this lens. It was also neat to hear how additional ideas that I hadn't thought of came up throughout the discussion, such as the World Bank documentary and how Jamaicans are forced to sell food they produce domestically so that they will import and buy food. What a great world connection!
I had a great time working with my group members and overall I was really happy with how the presentation turned out. Please continue to post things on the blog that pertain to the presentation today (Thanks to Brandon and Chris for your recent posts). I will definitely use the information that I learned throughout this project and apply it in my own classroom someday. Thanks for being such great listeners and participants!
Becky
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ReplyDeleteMy small group analyzed a small portion of the book Poisonwood Bible, which is one of my favorites. My group really did a great job picking up the different themes in the language that was used, sentences like “Don’t blame God for what the ants have to do [roam, terrorize and eat everything in sight]. We all get hungry. Congolese people are not so different from Congolese ants.” And “When things are pushed down long enough they will rise up. If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know how.” Within just a half a page, we discovered obvious themes of anger, fighting suppression, questioning the justification of violence, poverty, political silence and white vs. black populations.
ReplyDeleteI was also really impressed with the second viewing of the Invictus clip. The class really picked up on the themes present in the clip, despite so many things being flashed quickly during the two and a half minutes. As Guy said during our small group discussion (something along the lines of), “Postcolonial theory, as interesting as it is, is a tough subject. Lots of emotion involved and no easy answers.” Well said.
I hope that we were able to deliver some insight into this complicated topic. A agree with Guy's statement... 'well said' indeed. I'm taking a break from reading City Boy to post this, and with the new knowledge of the post colonial lens I am understanding it differently than I would have before hand, although I suppose this goes without saying. Back to the idea that this is a complicated topic... I feel that one thing that could have improved our presentation would have been a little bit of a history lesson to expand the context a bit. Of course, we were not able to fit our entire presentation into the class period in the first place, so I guess this would fall under a "perfect world" desire.
ReplyDeleteI think our presentation went really well besides maybe the heavy section of lecture. The class responded well to the questions posed throughout the presentation and did great on picking up on the postcolonial ideas from the movie clips of Invictus and Pocahontas, as well as in small group. As Chris said, a little more historical context would help, however the class seemed to respond well enough to utilize the theory for City Boy.
ReplyDeleteFor my small group, we analyzed a Babar book and picked up on the mimicry of the elephants assuming human styles and activities. They also mentioned the double consciousness Babar feels when he is separated from his fellow elephants in his new society. Although it was a children's book and not intensely loaded, my group enjoyed the reading and were able to assess the postcolonial aspects.
I'd agree with most everything my group's already mentioned -- the theory, while charged with uncomfortable racial/cultural tensions, is simply too important to ignore. This is something the class certainly took to heart. Even the early responses to the Invictus clip (knowledge of Nelson Mandela and apartheid, the fence parallels of the rich, powerful whites, versus poor, oppressed blacks, etc.) revealed an deeper understanding than even I, personally, had, before a thorough review of our portion of CTT. I was impressed early on, and even more pleased that this particular clip really "cracked open" the class, easing insights out of them -- ones which they might not directly contribute otherwise.
ReplyDeleteOur powerpoint, it seemed, was necessary to arm them with the intellectual buzzwords required to sound informed about the theory, but could likely have transitioned more smoothy among the sections. Considering all the great text examples we used within our small groups (I used an obscure Nigerian poet, plus a short, perfectly demonstrative story by Chinua Achebe), I wished we'd have had time, or been confident enough in any one text, to do an aloud-reading. I feel like this could have been an alternate form of stimulation (not a lecture, but not a visual either), to break up the monotony of "talking at" the class for so long.
Nonetheless, the important ideas got through enough -- the postcolonial aspects of both texts jumped out immediately at my group, as well as the deconstructive point of how an African poem can be unwittingly colonialist. Hopefully this sort of analysis came just as easily for the class and City Boy!